


cup and saucer

by Kalael



Series: string figures [2]
Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Do Not Archive, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-24
Updated: 2018-02-24
Packaged: 2019-03-23 08:27:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,666
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13783629
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kalael/pseuds/Kalael
Summary: Martin’s gotten very good at scrubbing the blood out of things.(companion to "jacob's ladder" because Martin deserves to be more than a background character.  He also deserves more than what I'm putting him through.)





	cup and saucer

Martin’s gotten very good at scrubbing the blood out of things. He can never fully get the stains to go away but the smell eventually leaves and the marks fade into the tapestry of the Archives, a place of paper and ink and blood, like the reception of an emergency room. If he looks he can pinpoint exactly which stain was from what. Jon’s bleeding hand while he lies about bread knives, Tim’s gushing nose after Not Sasha and the thing with sharp hands had left their heads ringing, a mishap where Melanie ran her hip into a cart while dodging a crazed statement giver when Jon was still away.

(He doesn’t think about Leitner.)

There are stains he doesn’t recognize, stains he tries not to think about. The stories sit in the blood and he’s sure there’s paperwork about them somewhere, statements from archivists and assistants past. Martin is far more concerned with the present, with the things he can change and the things he’s learned from what he couldn’t. He doesn’t have blood in these Archives. It worries him a little, a superstitious nagging. He hasn’t given it blood or sacrificed enough, and somehow that will come back to bite him. With Prentiss he’d come out of it much better than Jon and Tim, and it’s not as though blood had saved Sasha from the Not Them. So it’s just superstition, like walking under ladders or saying ‘rabbit rabbit’ on the first day of the month.

He still worries over it.

 _Out, damned spot_ , his mind supplies melodramatically. He’s in the break room with the kettle on and it’s mostly empty except for the corner of the room, where a post it note is tacked unassumingly near the ceiling. It’s old and faded and the drawing of the eye stares down with quiet intensity. Martin sticks his tongue out at it as the kettle begins to whistle. The ritual of making tea has always been calming. Fill kettle, boil kettle, prepare tea, wait. Fill cup, add cream, spoon sugar, stir. It’s as much an anxiety reliever as it is a useful bit of nagging to get his coworkers to relax, so tea has become habit like holding open doors and double checking the Archives for worms. A politeness, a reassurance.

He’s brewing tea for himself and for Jon, since Tim has a coffee and Melanie prefers soda after three in the afternoon. He’d thought about asking Elias, he always does, but Elias always says no and Martin decides not to bother. When the tea is brewed and the stove is off he balances the two cups down the stairs to the Archives, bumping Jon’s office door open with his hip. He knows Jon has already finished recording for the day since the door is already cracked.

“Assam!” He says cheerfully by way of greeting. Jon startles like he always does, but there’s no yelling or even a half hearted insult.

“Thank you.” Jon says solemnly instead.

“You’re welcome. I didn’t see Tim on my way in, did he go home?” Martin sets the cup of assam black tea down on the desk, still cradling his own earl grey. Jon looks something like guilty at the question as he shakes his head.

“No, Elias’ office.” Of course. Martin tries not to frown and fails, which turns Jon’s guilty non-expression into a grimace. They both sip their respective tea and neither says a word. Martin isn’t stupid, and he’s realized that Tim has been to Elias’ office quite a bit over the past few months. He’s also noticed Jon and Tim getting closer, even if the animosity hasn’t faded much.

It’s certainly not jealousy. Martin’s relationship with Jon is clear, perhaps even _healthy_ as Jon has finally started to rely on Martin as a proper assistant and (dare he imagine) friend. And Martin has never entertained any sort of illusions over his relationship with Elias, which has always been on the blurrier side of vague, and at least Martin’s got steady pay with his correct name on the cheque. Tim is a bit harder to get. They’d never been terribly close, but Tim had always treated Martin as a sort of confidant and Martin had almost always been able to rely on Tim for a solid lunch break and casual, non-supernatural banter.

Everything’s shifted. It’s uncomfortable in a way Martin doesn’t know how to describe, or who to even talk to about it. Melanie is nice but she’s new, and she spends all her time in the library with Basira or out on the town doing follow up research. Basira is...Basira, and on the rare occasion he spots Daisy. She looks ready to murder anything that so much glances her way, and Martin tries not to look at her more than strictly necessary. Really, all Martin has is tentative connections with Jon and Tim, and...himself.

So he loses himself in work and tea. When Jon’s absent, either in Elias’ office or off searching for direct statements, Martin reads past statements on his own. He makes tea and drains himself of energy. Since Prentiss there hasn’t been much in the way of personal threats, though he’s not sure what to think of the man with the sharp hands and he’s certainly worried about Not Sasha making a comeback. The archives are lonelier than they’ve ever been.

It’s early winter when Martin starts working late at the archives. He knows Jon and Tim are still in the building, since Tim tends to leave his jacket on his chair and Jon doesn’t turn off the lights. They’re likely in Elias’ office. Martin isn’t stupid, especially not after everything in the last year and a half. He’s noticed things. He doesn’t snoop, and he doesn’t hang around out of a sense of envy or whatever. He’s honestly just lonely, and the statements in the archives make him feel less so. He doesn’t always record them aloud. They drain him the way they suck the life out of Jon, perhaps even more so, and Martin isn’t keen on falling further into the depthless eye. But he’s curious, so he reads and he loses himself.

He learns about the Not Them, and the The Stranger, and Michael. He realizes that the man with sharp hands is the thing with the corridors and knife-laughter. Martin reads, and he learns. As he learns, the curiosity goes unsated. So like he does with any follow up, he goes out in search of answers. But like any other leads, he comes up with few.

Martin wonders if his answers will come with blood. He’s not sure what he’s hoping for.

It’s midwinter when he stumbles across his first vampire. Its name is Bridget Davies, and although Martin knows something is objectively wrong, he is taken in by its wide round eyes and gentle cold hands. He’s had a few pints. It’s close to Christmas and he’s had to phone his mum to tell her he’s too caught up with work to come home. It isn’t a lie. Bridget soothes him with talk of cocoa and cats and how lonely they are, no parents, no home. Martin knows it’s lying. He still follows.

Maybe it’s the loneliness. Maybe it’s the curiosity. Something inside him burns dimly and he allows the thing called Bridget Davies to lead him to a dusty little flat somewhere in Pimlico. He knows he’s allowing it. He knows something’s wrong. Warning bells go off like sirens banging about his skull, blacklight flashing and instinct screaming. He thinks that if Jon has made it all this way, then Martin can damn well do it too.

He’s wrong. He’s so fucking horrendously wrong. The thing called Bridget Davies tries to rip his throat out, nearly succeeds, only manages to gash his neck and tear a chunk out of his woolen cowl neck sweater. Martin chokes, and he cries, and between holding a hand to his neck and grasping at the wall for purchase, he manages to smear blood in a vertical line down the dusty wallpaper.

 _Escape,_ he thinks desperately.

“Help!” He screams loudly. The blood he’d smeared down the wall turns black and shifts. There is a door. Without thinking, Martin grabs the shiny black handle of this pale yellow door and he flings himself through the threshold.

When he wakes, he is home in his flat. The gash on his neck is a crusted mess, and he is laying on his kitchen floor, but he is alive. Martin breathes a sigh of something, and he falls back to sleep on the linoleum. His dreams are spirals.

“Are you alright?” Elias asks over the phone. His voice is carefully crafted nonchalance but there’s something to it. Not worry, not anger. Just something that Martin needs to answer.

“No,” Martin says, “But I think I will be.”

“Take care.” And the line goes dead, a steady beeping that Martin lays down on the couch and soothes himself to sleep with. His dreams are doors, like childhood cartoon chases, except every monster is Bridget Davies and every door is pale yellow with a gleaming black knob.

The holidays end. Tim comes to work with a thick scarf and a hickey so dark it nearly shadows through the blue wool. Jon’s fingers tap restlessly on his desk and he’s started wearing cowl neck sweaters like Martin’s, except Jon’s are much finer and more delicately printed. Martin isn’t stupid, but he doesn’t ask. Neither Jon nor Tim ask about the bandages on Martin’s own neck, which is just as well. 

“Tea?” Martin asks, and whether or not anyone wants it he sets about it with shaking hands. Fill kettle, boil kettle, prepare tea, wait. Fill cup, add cream, spoon sugar, stir.

It’s two weeks after Bridget Davies when Martin is alone in the break room long after hours, putting the kettle on with earl grey and preparing to read up on old statements. He’s just heated the stove when his head goes fuzzy, near blank. There’s a familiar rolling nausea in his stomach up to his chest and a giggle in the back of his mind, like cement blocks falling and cracking. At the back of his tongue, down his nasal cavity, he tastes blood.

“Martin,” the thing greets, and Martin grimaces before turning around.

“Michael,” He says, because he knows the name the thing has used. It smiles from the table at the center of the room and it stretches from corners that should not exist.

“A name.” Michael nods. It crosses its legs and Martin can’t watch, the twister of nonexistent joints drawing him in too deeply if he does. “It seems you have made a connection.”

“I’m not sure I follow.” He can hear the kettle hissing behind him, and he desperately wishes it weren’t so late after hours. A small part of him hopes Jon or Tim will notice. A larger part of him knows they won’t.

“You asked for a door,” it sings, discordant, “and the door came.”

“I don’t know if that counts?” Martin’s hands are shaking and the kettle is ready to scream. He turns quickly and takes the kettle from the stovetop, settles it on a cool burner. “Tea?”

Michael considers. The silence stretches, although Martin can’t tell if it’s for a moment or an hour. The steam from the kettle obscures itself in patterns that make him dizzy.

“Yes.” It hangs onto the word like sliding down a pole, dragging blisters. Martin takes an extra cup from the cupboard and makes two cups of tea, two earl greys with two creams and one sugar. He stares into them for a long while, milky swirls in murky dark cups, and he shakes his head to bring himself back to the reality he thinks is true.

“Earl grey.” Martin says softly. He sets a cup down in front of Michael; it takes it by the delicate handle but does not drink. “Was this because of the...vampire?”

“Bridget Davies!” Michael exclaims. “It lives. The door merely took you.”

“Um...I suppose a thank you is in order, then.” Martin tries to sip his tea. His hands shake too much, the liquid spills onto the table. “I’m not sure I would have made it, if the wound had been deeper.”

This sets the thing off in a way Martin can’t totally comprehend. There’s a screaming from something that isn’t the kettle, because Martin had turned it off immediately. Michael delightedly clacks its fingers on the teacup and Martin winces as it cracks.

“A blood debt!” It crows, laughter in its exhalation. “Oh, your Archivist will be so unhappy. One of his things being caught up in what he’s tried so hard to protect it from.”

“What exactly is a blood debt?” Martin asks warily.

“A _debt_ , something to be paid. Your Archivist owes me two.” It sounds pleased, the words it makes are a scraping noise, peeling at the back of Martin’s brain. “And you owe...one. Though yours is significant. You sacrificed for your Archives, yes, and you will be loved by it.”

“But what does that have to do with you?”

“It has nothing to do with me.” It is both honest and lying in that single phrase and Martin’s head aches. He rests his forehead against his hands and Michael laughs, a whispered breaking of glass.

“Then why do I owe you a debt?”

“I am not a thing to be owed debts.” Again with the lack of identity and personhood, which Martin can’t wrap his mind around because the damn thing is sitting in front of him with a leaking teacup in its hands. “But the debt is owed blood, and you will give it in kind.”

“Well, that’s ominous.”

“It isn’t.” Michael says, and with one tea soaked hand it reaches out to pat Martin’s shoulder reassuringly. It lies, Martin knows that, but there’s nothing to be done now.

“So when will you...cash in?”

“At the next blood,” Michael tells him. There is a door in the wall next to the refrigerator. It is pale yellow and the knob is shiny black, like the carapace of a beetle. While Martin looks at it he is startled to hear the wet crunching of china, and he glances quickly at Michael to see that it has grated the teacup to coarse, soggy dust.

“You’re welcome to join me.” Michael smiles, nothing but teeth in what could be a face. Martin looks at the door, feels himself begin to rise.

The kettle screams.

The moments, or hours, are a blur after that. Michael is gone and the kettle is screaming and then it is not. Somehow Martin has gone to check it, his own cup still in hand, and nothing is correct. There is no water in the kettle and the stove isn’t even hot. Martin stares at it with no small amount of confusion.

Then there’s Elias standing in the doorway, the real door that leads to the real hallway, looking disgruntled and a bit out of breath like he had been speed walking.

“Was that thing here?” He demands to know. Martin’s hands are still shaking and he drops his own teacup. It’s bone dry, and cracks neatly in three pieces at his feet. This is apparently answer enough for Elias and he looks up at the post it note in the corner that Martin had forgotten about. “I see we need more...surveillance. Or at least more suitable precautions.”

“Y-yes,” Martin agrees, or just stutters for the sake of making a sound.

“Are you quite alright?”

“No, but I will be.” Elias knows he is lying, but there is little either of them can do for it. So he just nods and leaves Martin to the mess of teacups in the break room.

He is alone again. Martin swallows, and as he cleans up the cups, he is very careful not to spill blood.


End file.
